“Add as much sweetcorn as you can without getting fired” is a fairly precise instruction for the person preparing a sandwich. For the creative team at Saatchi & Saatchi, it also made a good ad. In the new campaign for Subway, requests like these move out of the order notes section and onto billboards, enlarged along with the receipts on which they are printed.
Among them is a plea for enough garlic and herb sauce to take down a vampire, as well as a request for a single jalapeño to be placed at random in a Spicy Italian sandwich, so the heat comes as a surprise. The black-and-white receipts retain the directness of these messages: customers address staff, exaggerate, joke and know very clearly what they want to eat. The Get Your Own Way campaign builds a new brand platform around these habits, centred on the ability to customise an order.
The receipts were among the materials the agency brought to its very first meeting with the client. Louise Wardle, Subway’s EMEA chief marketing officer, explains in an interview with LBB that the team found highly specific orders on Reddit. Her immediate reaction was to recognise their potential for out-of-home advertising. Customers had shown in their own words how they use the brand, and the agency recognised how much more interesting those details could be than the usual promise of a wide selection.
For Wardle, that choice has particular value in a category increasingly shaped by fixed combinations, app-driven defaults and algorithmic recommendations for additional purchases. Subway focuses its communication on the decisions customers make for themselves, from bread and ingredients to the amount of sauce. An option that has long existed at the counter now takes on a greater role in the brand’s positioning.
The advertising spots explore how far the confidence gained from such an order can go. After getting exactly what they want at Subway, the protagonists try to apply the same principle elsewhere: one changes the television channel in the middle of a football match at the pub, while the other uses a driving lesson to go shopping. Their expectations meet with considerably less understanding outside the restaurant.
During the development of the spots, the team moved away from overly surreal situations and sought recognisable everyday actions. How audiences perceived the protagonists also mattered. Wardle explains that they wanted a reaction along the lines of “I wish I had that much confidence”, so the humour had to be carefully judged to keep the characters from coming across as irritating or obnoxious.
The new visual identity was also developed from something customers already know. The shapes of the metal ingredient containers arranged along restaurant counters became the basis of a flexible graphic system. They are accompanied by a revised colour palette, typography and photographs showing people up close as they eat sandwiches made to their own taste. Wardle insisted that ingredients remain visible within the graphic shapes, so the connection to food would not be lost in abstract design.
Get Your Own Way launched on 1 October and spans online video, out-of-home advertising, radio and print. Advertising placements in The Sun and Metro are also planned, responding to current news in the spirit of the campaign. For the different EMEA markets, the spots were shot in a modular format, with most of the dialogue delivered through voiceover, allowing language and practical adaptations to be made without a new production.
The platform is part of the broader Blueprint programme, through which Subway is changing the appearance of its restaurants and the ordering experience. Its application therefore extends to packaging, the app and the restaurants themselves, where customers should have the same freedom to build their meal whether they order at the counter or through a digital kiosk.
